Red Tentacle: A Music Solutions Company

Creating First Impressions

February 4, 2014

With modern technology it is easy to stay in touch with your fans and even encouraged; while in the majority of cases this is a boon in some situations this can be detrimental. The most common case for this is allowing fans to access and hear incomplete or unpolished songs.

Most fans of your music are likely to want to hear things like rough mixes or demos of but chances are that you should avoid letting fans here these until after they have heard the final version of a song. Letting fans first experience with a song be one where it is incomplete or of poor sound is likely to leave a bad impression on all but the most interested of fans. It can also be detrimental to have fans get familiar with a song when the rhythm, melody or lyrics can still change, chances are you want your fans to be most familiar with the final version you play live and not the original rough cut.

Having demos or rough mixes be a person’s first experience of your music ever can create a negative impression for new fans. For people who are already fans this effect is dampened by their foreknowledge of what to expect but for someone unfamiliar with you it may make them think of your band not sounding very good or professional. Anytime you are trying to introduce someone to your music you should always put your best foot forward and let them experience what your music sounds like when fully finished.

You may also want to keep your demos out of the public eye if you are still shopping the album around to labels. While not as stern as they used to be on this sort of matter there are still plenty of labels(in particular the bigger ones) who will not want to release an album if fans already have easy access to a previous version of it. Allowing other industry to hear a rough draft or preview music for them is fine but you should never let something go public without fully considering the ramifications.